Lorex Doorbell Camera Review

Lorex Doorbell: Initial Thoughts

There’s nothing particularly special about the 2K’s design. It’s rectangular, with a square camera face and a ring button that emits a faint greenish glow. Pretty average. Its nearest lookalike is the Wyze Video Doorbell Pro, and while there’s nothing wrong with Wyze cameras, Wyze is a more budget-friendly brand than Lorex. Still, the 2K is slimmer than the Ring Video Doorbell 3. Plus, the 2K comes in a choice of black and white. That may not sound like a big deal, but few camera companies have any color choice at all.

Lorex Doorbell Camera Box

What does the Lorex camera cost? The wired 2K we tested is priced at $149.99. That puts it in the mid-range of video doorbells. The wireless version is an additional $30. We mentioned Wyze before. Its doorbells start at $29.98 for a refurbished Doorbell v2 and range up to $98 for a Doorbell Pro. To be fair, the Lorex doorbell we tested offers 2K resolution and a number of features that even Wyze Doorbell Pro can’t match.

In fact, in terms of function, the 2K is probably most similar to Google Nest’s cameras. Those are priced roughly the same, but you’ll save money with Lorex over the long haul since Lorex doesn’t charge any monthly fees. Once you’ve purchased the 2K itself, you’re done. With local storage options, you don’t even have to pay to save footage. Ring, SimpliSafe, and Nest can’t say that.

Installing the Lorex Doorbell

There’s no getting around the fact that you have to install your Lorex doorbell yourself, but the company does everything it can to make the process painless. Our box included a QR code (you can find the same code on the backplate of the doorbell itself). Once we scanned that, the Lorex app took over, providing us with simple step-by-step instructions.

We wanted a challenge, so we chose a hardwired version of Lorex’s doorbell camera. That meant disconnecting our old doorbell and doing a little wire twisting. Just make sure to shut the power to your doorbell off before doing this. Unfortunately, once we got our old doorbell out, we discovered our existing doorbell wiring wasn’t in the best shape. Thankfully, Lorex included some spare cable connectors we used to fix the issue. Then, we moved onto installing our Lorex doorbell.

Again, Lorex goes out of its way to make things simple. The doorbell came with a toolkit so you don’t have to go hunting for your screwdriver. With the power still off, we could screw the new unit onto the doorframe. Once we turned the electricity back on, everything worked like a charm. The Lorex doorbell even worked with our old chime.

Of course, if you’re at all worried about working with electricity, there’s never any shame in calling in an electrician.

Installing the Lorex Doorbell Camera

The Lorex doorbell includes a chime kit, so if yours isn’t working for some reason, or you’re looking for a change, you have options. In the end, we decided to stick with the one we had. After all, it’s the one that gets our dog up and barking whenever anyone comes to the door.

All told, this project took us just under two hours. That’s not bad, considering we’ve been involved in doorbell installations that took entire afternoons. Had our wiring not been a bit wonky, we could have completed the job faster. Lorex’s DIY materials and instructions made the process easy.

Lorex Doorbell Camera Chime Kit

Lorex Doorbell Camera

Our Full Experience with Lorex Doorbell

So here’s the real question: what’s it like living with the Lorex Doorbell? All-in-all, we found the device to be both fast and reliable, exactly the qualities you want in a video doorbell.

When we say fast, we basically mean instantaneous. You can probably figure out for yourself why that matters. It takes only a few seconds for a porch pirate to swipe a package from in front of your door. If your video doorbell takes thirty seconds to a minute to transmit video to your app, you’re never going to catch someone in the act. To be fair, it did take a second or two to open the app up once the alert arrived, but that had more to do with our large thumbs than anything related to Lorex. The more important fact is that the alert arrived virtually the same moment the camera detected movement.

Lorex Doorbell Camera Device Log

Just as importantly, the image we pulled up was crystal clear. Keep in mind that the industry’s image resolution standard is 1080p HD. A 2K camera provides twice as many pixels as one with 1080p HD resolution. That’s sharp enough to see that our mailman is growing a goatee. It is worth noting that the Lorex 2K uses a Wi-Fi signal, and any time signal strength drops, it can affect the streaming quality. In short, the 2K’s resolution can fluctuate between standard and high definition depending on signal strength. This is pretty typical, though. We came across the same issue when we reviewed SkyBell’s Video Doorbell.

Lorex actually has a 4K model as well, though we haven’t had a chance to get our hands on it yet. Given the 2K’s clarity, we can only expect that the 4K will let us count the hairs on the neighbor’s dog’s tail when he’s nosing around our front porch.

Two-way audio is standard for video doorbells. It allows homeowners to respond in real-time to anyone who happens to stop by. The 2K uses full duplex two-way audio so we had no trouble hearing or being heard over the system. When a salesman stopped by selling magazine subscriptions, we were able to tell him no without revealing the fact that we weren’t actually at home.

As an aside, our tests of the Lorex device happened to coincide with a pretty legit snowstorm in our neck of the woods, leaving us with 6-8 inches of pretty white stuff when all was said and done. We thought the scene would make for some calming, tranquil footage, even without a human involved. We think we were right.

Of course, it helped that the doorbell is rated to temperatures as low as four degrees below zero Fahrenheit. For those in warmer climates, it’s also rated up to 122 degrees Fahrenheit. As a bonus, it also has an IP65 rating. That means it’s dust tight and can resist low-pressure water jets. In other words, it could have handled much worse than our weather.

Check out this short video of the Lorex doorbell:

Person Detection

Lorex Motion Detection

Every Lorex camera – at least the Lorex cameras we’ve reviewed – features person detection. That can be a game-changer when it comes to deciding on the right video doorbell. Person detection means your doorbell can tell it’s an actual person on your front porch rather than a dog or a squirrel or a leaf blowing by. Without it, you can wind up getting alerts every couple of minutes, and when you get that many alerts, you’re bound to let your guard down.

Of course, if you’re looking to find out which of the neighbor’s dog is spending his afternoon sleeping in your porch swing, you might want to turn person detection off and use Lorex’s plain old motion detection. Or you can turn off motion detection entirely. You also have the option to create customizable zones. The point is, you’re in control of capturing what you think is important.

Lorex Doorbell Camera Video Quality

164-degree Field of View

How much coverage a doorbell camera provides depends largely on the camera’s viewing angle. Of course, this varies from brand to brand. The Lorex 2K Doorbell is above average with its 164-degree angle. We have seen larger angles though. When we reviewed Blue by ADT’s doorbell, we discovered it provides a whopping 180-degree angle. That’s as wide as possible. Still, 164 degrees definitely sets Lorex apart.

Having a nice, wide video is certainly a plus — especially when you’re trying to track packages and other deliveries. In that regard, Lorex really nails it. Note that you will need to fiddle with it some to get the angle just right. You do want it to be pointing down slightly so you can see when items arrive:

But to put things in perspective, we’re used to seeing 120- to 140-degree fields of view from Lorex’s competitors, so 164-degrees felt like a luxury to have.

Color Night Vision

As a brand with a huge selection, Lorex has been in our testing repertoire many times over. Their outdoor Wi-Fi camera was an early favorite of ours, namely due to the impressive color night vision.

Lorex Doorbell Camera Night Vision

We’ve found that in most cameras, the higher the video resolution, the better the night vision. Keep in mind, then, that Lorex’s outdoor cam maxes out at 1080p resolution, which is still excellent HD quality but not quite as spectacular as the Lorex Doorbell.

With the doorbell cam, we get a picture that’s not only in full color, but that’s also sharper than some daytime camera footage we’ve seen. It’s a far better picture than the one we got from SimpliSafe’s 720p SimpliCam, for instance, which doesn’t have color night vision and maxes out at standard definition. But honestly, SimpliSafe is better known for their affordable DIY security system — so if you’re interested in total home security, see our SimpliSafe review.

Of course, some folks aren’t all that concerned with video quality or night vision in a doorbell cam; they just want a quality device to monitor visitors and help them feel safer in their homes. Lorex delivered that for us easily, but check out our full doorbell camera buying guide for even more ideas.

View from the Lorex Doorbell Camera

Smart Home Integration

Lorex doorbells work with both Alexa and Google Home. There was no Apple HomeKit compatibility, but that’s rare in the home security market. We were actually more bothered by the fact that there was no IFTTT support. With IFTTT, you can create all sorts of groovy routines connecting smart home components together. Oh well. We had no trouble pulling up the live feed on our Amazon Echo Show, one of the Alexa-enabled devices in our home, to get a quick peek at who was at our door. So we were happy enough.

One of the cool things about Lorex is that you don’t even need an existing smart platform. You can integrate your doorbell into Lorex’s own proprietary Smart Home Security System. With a centralized hub, that system lets you view and record footage, talk to visitors, and turn cameras on and off with just the tap of a finger. The system also now includes facial detection technology for added security. Plus, you can use bluetooth to connect your home speakers for streaming music throughout your home.

Still, Lorex’s relatively limited capabilities when it comes to integration was a definite disappointment in relation to competitors like Arlo. As we noted in our Arlo Video Doorbell review, Arlo supports pairing with all of the major smart home platforms. So if you’re a smart home aficionado, you might want to look at Arlo instead.

Feature Summary

So overall, the Lorex 2K video doorbell does offer intriguing features. We summarized and ranked the features here in order of their importance and usefulness. If you agree that these are the best features to look for, then the Lorex 2K video doorbell will likely work great for you.

Lorex Doorbell Camera Pricing

The brand’s aversion to monthly fees and contracts4 makes Lorex a great pick for the budget-conscious, and this rings true with their video doorbell, too. Even with an upgrade in video resolution, Lorex still prices their latest doorbell fairly at $199.99. And, it was on sale for $150 at the time of this writing. (They also have a 1080p option for $79.99, if you’re interested.) For all of that without monthly fees, we’d say this is a pretty decent deal.

It’s certainly not the cheapest way to keep tabs on your front door while you’re at work, though. Then again, most doorbells don’t have 2K HDR video. We don’t necessarily need 2K in a doorbell cam, but we do admit it’s a nice picture.

For what it’s worth, Lorex Doorbell is only $10 more than SimpliSafe’s Video Doorbell Pro. We’d consider both devices around the middle range in pricing. You could always go bigger, like the more advanced Vivint Doorbell Pro, for $249; you’ll get a pretty mind-blowing set of features, not to mention an even slimmer design that’s ideal for apartments and small spaces.

And if you’re interested in keeping an eye on more than just your entryway, here’s a quick breakdown of some of Lorex’s security camera offerings:

Our Final Thoughts on the Lorex Doorbell

When all was said and done, we found a few trouble spots in the installation and hardwiring stage to keep us from fully falling in love with the Lorex 2K QHD Wired Video Doorbell. For older homes like ours, hardwiring is already a challenge. But on top of that, Lorex’s equipment didn’t snap into place very easily, so by the time it was all done, we knew we had spent much more time installing this device than other doorbell cams we’ve used.

That said, Lorex still managed to pack plenty of power into its wired doorbell cam, giving us an overall smooth and hassle-free experience monitoring everyone entering and leaving our home.3 More than that, though, we were intrigued by the 2K resolution. This, after all, is not something we see every day, even in the industry’s best doorbell cameras. Combined with color night vision, we enjoyed the view each time we peeked over at our live feed.

We have little doubt this device would give you the peace of mind you’re looking for in a doorbell cam – but prepare for a tricky installation (or hire a handyman!).

Frequently Asked Questions